Sunday, December 21, 2014

...since the Rodney King verdict. It was my freshman year in college, and it was probably the first time in my life I felt like the world was a completely inexplicable place.

We're obviously still grappling with the same issues of social justice and privilege, but now we have to fight the filter bubble as well.

Do we know what's going on? It seems to depend largely on who we followed, or friended, sometimes a while back.

Can you breathe or not? Do black lives matter, or not? I hate to think it comes down to algorithms, but it does. It's impossible to make a difference, even on a personal scale, if we don't know what's going on...

Monday, December 15, 2014

This year, my reading has been reactionary. That’s because,
for the amazing Odyssey committee,I’ve been
listening to SO much children’s and YA lit.While I’ve never before been so on top of the young people’s scene, it
also makes me want to read some more grown-up stuff. So I’ll start with a
sprinkling of young adult titles before I move on to what has made up most of
my reading year…

Believe the hype...this was so good that I immediately, upon finishing, started
over from the beginning. I still have some issue with the ridiculous privilege
of Cadie and her kin, but echoes of King Lear cement it as a modern classic.

I stumbled onto this one after reading Without you, there is no us (2014), Kim’s book about her experiences teaching in an English-language school for the children of the North Korean
elite. It’s a fascinating exploration of the immigrant experience, family
secrets and fallings-out, and Suzy is fantastically drawn.

I just adore Caitlin Moran. Her Moranthology got me to read Life,
the Keith Richards autobiography which gave me an entirely new appreciation of a band I've been listening to for 25 years. This is her first novel, heavily autobiographical,
laugh-out-loud funny, and very resonant of the early 90s for those of a certain
age.

Like everyone else stateside, I read The husband’s secret (2013)
first, but this one is my favorite. It
also has a killer postscript. I want more Australian books. It’s terrific to
read genre fiction from a different but not dissimilar culture.

Compared with 2012 and 2013, it's been an overwhelmingly female, overwhelmingly British reading year...maybe I'll shake things up a bit in 2015.